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Video: A Suburban Revolution

B6: Water

Research Context, Methods and Goals:

The research under this cluster is scheduled to start in Year 3 (2012-13). It will draw on the Infrastructure and Everyday Suburbanisms clusters and run parallel to the South Asia and Boundaries clusters. It will focus on two city-regions – Rhein-Main Area, Germany and New Delhi-Gurgaon, India.

The focus of the theme will primarily be on waste – its generation, collection, transportation, treatment, regulation, disposal and reuse. We will: i) identify how suburban infrastructure regimes shift in response to emerging wastewater problems resulting from suburban growth and demographic changes, ii) map the rise of new service providers (e.g. private septic tank owners, water and resource trader, international investors, technology ventures), iii) document the influence of new actors – community level organizations (like RWAs in the case of India), urban local bodies, national level institutional arrangements, and global actors– on infrastructure provision, iv) record any new or existing environmental regulations that inform the politics of infrastructure, v) scrutinize the initiatives to organize water and wastewater management regionally in the Rhine-Main area (e.g. through inter-municipal collaboration, regional wastewater associations or regional mergers).